GETTING STARTED

Summary:

  0. Terminology

  1. Installing Bogofilter

  2. Preparing for use

     a. Configuring bogofilter

     b. Training bogofilter

  3. Setting up the mail transfer and delivery agents

  4. Use with mail user agent

  5. Ongoing training

  6. Tuning bogofilter

  7. The bogoutil program

  8. Other useful commands

  9. Additional information

0. Terminology

--------------

    spam - unwanted email

    ham  - wanted mail (also called non-spam)

    false positive - a ham message that is wrongly scored as spam

    false negative - a spam message that is wrongly scored as ham

1. Installing Bogofilter

------------------------

    Bogofilter can be installed from source or from a binary package.

    Releases are made available on SourceForge.net.

    If you're a newbie, installing from a binary package is quickest

    and easiest.  If you're running an rpm based distro like Fedora

    or OpenSUSE, install bogofilter from an rpm.  Similarly if you're

    running Debian, Mint, or Ubuntu, install from a deb package.

    Once downloaded and untarred, build and install with the usual 

    commands, i.e.  "configure", "make", and "make install".  To ensure 

    that the newly built bogofilter is running properly on your hardware 

    and operating system, use "make check" to run a series of tests.  

    For source rpms, use "rpm -bb bogofilter.spec" and "rpm -ivh

    bogofilter" (or comparable commands).

    Binary formats include builds for dynamically linked (shared)

    libaries, e.g. bogofilter-VER.x64_64.rpm.

    See the INSTALL file for more info.

2. Preparing for use

--------------------

    Once bogofilter has been installed, it needs to be configured and

    trained, i.e. given messages that you classify as spam and ham.

    2a. Configuring bogofilter

    --------------------------

    Bogofilter's default configuration is conservative, i.e. only

    messages that score very high on the ham/spam scale are classified

    as spam.  This is done to minimize the number of false positives

    (non-spam messages which are classified as spam).

    If you need (or wish) to change bogofilter's configuration

    options, the file is named "bogofilter.cf" and bogofilter first

    checks for /etc/bogofilter.cf and then for

    ~/.bogofilter/bogofilter.cf.  The configuration options are

    described in file bogofilter.cf.example.

    2b. Training bogofilter

    -----------------------

    Bogofilter uses a database for storing its tokens and their ham

    and spam counts.  The file is commonly called "the wordlist" and

    its standard location is ~/.bogofilter/wordlist.db.

    The simple rule when training bogofilter is "more is better".

    As distributed, bogofilter does not include a wordlist.  You, the

    user, need to tell bogofilter what you consider spam and what you

    consider ham.  This is bogofilter's training process and involves

    running bogofilter with appropriate flags and with messages you've

    determined are ham and spam.  As bogofilter can work with multiple

    mail formats, e.g. mailboxes, maildirs, MH directories, etc, the

    training commands will depend on your environment.

    As the default wordlist directory is $HOME/.bogofilter, the

    wordlist itself will be in $HOME/.bogofilter/wordlist.db.  For

    user john, this is /home/john/.bogofilter/wordlist.db.

    Some useful options for training include:

	  -s - register message(s) as spam.

	  -n - register message(s) as non-spam.

	  -M - use mailbox mode, i.e. classify multiple messages in an

               mbox formatted file.

	  -B file1, file2, ... - set bulk mode, i.e. process multiple

               messages (files or directories) named on the command

               line.

	  -v - sets the verbosity level, with the -s and -n training

	       options, this will give the number of messages read and

	       words entered in wordlist.db

    These options are documented in the bogofilter man page.

    Here are some sample commands:

       bogofilter -vn < ham.message.file

       bogofilter -vnM 

       bogofilter -vnMB ham.maildir

       bogofilter -vs < spam.message.file

       bogofilter -vsM 

       bogofilter -vsMB spam.maildir

3. Setting up the mail transfer and delivery agents

---------------------------------------------------

    Bogofilter works with many mail transfer agents (such as postfix,

    sendmail, and qmail) and many mail delivery agents (for example

    procmail and maildrop).  Each of these has its own configuration

    file and methods for invoking spam filters.  Bogofilter's

    documentation includes files "integrating-with-postfix" and

    "integrating-with-qmail".  Read them for ideas on how to set up

    bogofilter for your environment.

    The most common setup uses bogofilter's "-p" (passthrough) option

    which adds an "X-Bogosity:" line as the end of the message's mail

    header.  Typical examples of this line are:

     (for spam)

       X-Bogosity: Spam, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=1.000000, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Spam, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.999765, version=0.92.8

     (for non-spam)

       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000000, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000413, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.373476, version=0.92.8

     (for "unsures")

       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.500332, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.463498, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.640426, version=0.92.8

       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.824933, version=0.92.8

    Alternatively, bogofilter's return codes can be used by procmail

    (or maildrop) rules to put spam in one mailbox and ham in another.

4. Use with mail user agent

---------------------------

    Bogofilter is compatible with all mail user agents.  MUAs with

    filtering abilities can check the headers for "X-Bogosity: Spam"

    and "X-Bogosity: Ham" and take the appropriate actions for spam and

    ham.

    Alternatively, if your MUA has sufficient scripting capabilities,

    the MUA can run bogofilter and take the appropriate action.

    As time goes by and bogofilter encounters messages that it can not

    classify with certainty, there will be messages classified as

    "Unsure".  As these messages are in the "gray" area, meaning "not

    clearly ham and not clearly spam" it's useful to have your MUA

    filter these messages to a separate folder (or mailbox) so you can

    use them to

    train bogofilter.

5. Ongoing training

-------------------

    Bogofilter can only do a good job if it has accurate and

    comprehensive information in its wordlist.

    As time goes by and bogofilter classifies messages for you, it

    will encounter problems because it does not have enough information

    to correctly classify each and every message.  It's important to

    check message classifications!

    "False negatives", i.e. spam classified as ham, are easy since

    they'll appear in your inbox and be noticed.  "False positives"

    are important to find because they're messages you want!  All

    messages in these groups should be used to train bogofilter.

    Filtering "Unsure" messages into a separate folder (or mailbox),

    and manually classifying and separating them into spam and ham,

    gives a good set of messages for training (using bogofilter's "-s"

    and "-n" flags).

    Bogofilter's FAQ has two entries that provide additional info:

       How do I start my bogofilter training?"

       What are "training on error" and "training to exhaustion"?

    The FAQ can be online in English and French at:

       http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/bogofilter-faq.html

       http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/bogofilter-faq-fr.html

6. Tuning bogofilter

--------------------

    Once you've use bogofilter for a while, you may wish to optimize

    its classification parameters.  The bogotune utility uses your

    wordlist and additional ham and spam messages to check a large

    variety of possible parameter values and find what'll work best

    for your environment.  For more info, read the bogotune man page

    and file bogofilter-tuning.HOWTO.html.

7. The bogoutil program

-----------------------

    Bogoutil is a program that allows dumping the wordlist (as a text

    file), loading the wordlist (from a text file), displaying

    information about individual words, etc.

    Here are some sample uses of it:

    To display the wordlist contents:

       bogoutil -d ~/.bogofilter/wordlist.db

    To display the message counts for a word:

       bogoutil -w ~/.bogofilter .MSG_COUNT

8. Other useful commands

------------------------

    To test scoring of individual words:

       echo show these words | bogofilter -H -vvv

     or:

       bogoutil -p ~/.bogofilter show these words

    To see the tokens and their spamicity scores for a message:

      bogofilter -vvv < message

9. Additional information

-------------------------

    Bogofilter's distribution includes a number of files containing

    more information.  You'll find them in /usr/share/doc (or

    comparable location).  The following files are included:

    FAQs:

          English - bogofilter-faq.html

	  French  - bogofilter-faq-fr.html

    General:

	INSTALL

	NEWS

	README

	RELEASE.NOTES

    Man pages:

	bogofilter

	bogolexer

	bogoutil

	bogotune

	bogoupgrade

	(also distributed in html and xml formats)

    HOWTOS:

	bogofilter-tuning.HOWTO.html

	integrating-with-postfix

	integrating-with-qmail

    Operating System specific README files:

	README.freebsd

	README.hp-ux

	README.RISC-OS